Anti-Prom Makes Me Cry, Seems Like Most Fun Event Ever

In today’s warm fuzzy news, New York Times reporter Corey Kilgannon has a video and story up documenting the “anti-prom,” which was put on at the New York Public Library this year for teens who feel like they don’t fit in at their own school’s more traditional rite of passage.

The kids who go to the anti-prom don’t necessarily identify as LGBT, but there is LGBT representation and the event can’t help but be reminiscent of last year’s story involving Constance McMillen, the young woman from Mississippi whose prom was canceled because she wanted to attend with her girlfriend and wear a tuxedo.

Many of the kids Kilgannon interviewed said that they attended the anti-prom because they felt ostracized at their school, and would be ridiculed if they showed up at prom dressed how they wanted to be dressed — in other words, looking like themselves:

“You get judged in high school,” [said Clare Early, 16]. “You come here and you don’t get judged. Everybody is the same, everybody’s equal, everybody’s awesome.”

At this event, the prom queen wore a purple ruffled tutu and beads, and the prom king wore a tux but apparently “sprinted out of the building and up Fifth Avenue and could not be interviewed” after receiving his honor.

Also worth noting is the amusing blasé monotone of the reporter. I’m sure he’s a lovely man. And it’s a good reporting job. But still.